Here We Are Together: February 2012

It has been one month since Eva entered this world and became an official part of our family! We love having her in our home. With it being Eva's first month with us, there are a lot of things she has done for the first time.

The day she was released from the hospital, we came home and Brad had a roast dinner prepared for us. So, this is her first family meal:
While getting her first bath by Mom and Dad, we discovered something fun about Eva! When her hair gets wet, it is naturally curly! Her nurses in the hospital never let on to us...but we think it's pretty cute and she now sports a curl on the top of her head daily.
Such cute curls! The funny thing is, my mom has a picture of me with a curl on the top of my head when I was a baby and I always HATED it! I never thought I'd do that to my child, but now that I have a little girl, I think it helps make her look girly without having to have a bow in her hair every day. Now, I just love it! And I love that her hair does it naturally. Hopefully she'll think it's cute too when she's older and not hate it like I did!

Another thing we discovered about Eva, that's not so fun, is that she has REFLUX - yuck! Levi was a huge puker as a baby (his lasted the ENTIRE first year of his life) so I'm really not excited about Eva spitting up too.

As you can see from the look on Jacob's face, he's not thrilled either.

Here's a close up. And this isn't even one of her worst. We were able to get her on some medication and after upping her dosage, she seems to be doing much better. Let's hope this keeps up and we can keep the laundry down to a dull roar!

When Eva was 3 weeks and one day old, she busted out her first grin! I love it, what a cute, huge smile for such a little girl!

Here she is on her one month birthday:
This dress was made for Eva by a friend of mine's mother. Isn't it cute? It's a bit impractical to wear anywhere, but I thought she should at least get some pictures taken in it! We had some professional pictures taken of Eva, but I haven't gotten them back yet. When I do, I'll post them for all to see.

Eva sporting a bow for pictures. She's such a good baby - other than the spitting up. She'll go most nights for 4-5.5 hours before her first feeding followed by another one about 3 hours later. She hasn't learned to nap very well on her own yet, but I'm sure we'll be working on that over the next few weeks. We love having her as part of our family and are excited to see her growth over the next month. Love you Eva Lynn!

I wrote in my journal about the birth of Baby #3, so I decided to basically post it here as well. It may be long, it may be detailed, but this is pretty much what happened:

On Wednesday, January 25^th, I started the morning off like usual. I got Jacob ready for school and while I did, I noticed a contraction. I noticed another one right before we left, so I wrote down the time. It was 8:50 am. By the time Levi and I got back from dropping Jacob off at school, I had another one. It was 9:05 am. I'm never very sure when to say my labor started. Just because I had 2 contractions within 15 minutes of each other, to me, doesn't mean my labor had started, but maybe to you it does.

Once we got back from dropping Jacob off, I went downstairs to work out. Since I was riding my bike, I wasn’t sure if I was having contractions so the next contraction I recorded wasn’t until about 11:30 am. From there, the day progressed as normal, with me having contractions about every half hour. At about 5:00 pm, they began to come more frequently, making it to about every 10 minutes. To me, this is probably when labor really started. My contractions weren’t very bad and I was still able to function. I really didn’t want to get sent home from the hospital, so I didn’t rush in right away. At about 7:00 pm, the contractions were coming between 4-8 minutes apart and were getting more severe in pain. I called my parents while Brad was bathing the boys to see if my dad might be able to stay with the boys during the day on Thursday since I figured I would be having a baby sometime during the night. When I first called, my parents told me to just call in the middle of the night and they’d be ready to come. I then told them that I was pretty sure I would be having the baby that night and that I would rather they just come now. My dad asked if he could finish watching the Mizzou basketball game before coming over. I told him I thought that would be fine.

By about 8:00 pm, I wasn’t sure how much longer to wait before having my parents show up, so we called their house and told my dad we would DVR the game for him, but that we thought he needed to get there now. While we waited for them to arrive, I noticed that the kitchen was kind of a mess...so I decided to sweep. I think Brad thought this was odd, so he took a picture :)

My parents arrived at about 8:30 pm and Brad and I headed off to the hospital. I was having regular contractions that were pretty painful to me, but I was still able to walk and breathe through them without too much difficulty. We arrived at the hospital just before 9:00 pm, so we were able to enter through the regular entrance (rather than having to enter through the ER). We headed upstairs to the 5^th floor which is where Labor and Delivery is located. When I got there, they asked me a few questions and then took me back to the triage room where they started monitoring the baby and my contractions. I swear my contractions never show up on their stupid monitors so I felt like they didn’t really believe me that I was in labor and that I really was having contractions. The nurse checked me at about 9:15 pm and I was only dilated to a 2! I couldn’t believe it. I thought for sure all of the contractions during the day were doing more good than that. She then told me that they wanted me to walk the halls for about an hour and then come back so they could check me again and see if there were any cervical changes going on. By this time, it was about 10:00 pm. So, Brad and I walked the hallway, which is in the shape of a C, so we saw the same areas over and over again. My contractions kept coming closer together and were definitely getting stronger. I would have to stop along the railing and lean over and have Brad massage hard on my back. In the beginning he wasn’t doing it nearly as hard as I wanted him to. But by the end, he understood that I needed really hard pressure on my back as that’s where all of the contractions were putting their strength. I think his hands were getting pretty tired, but he was a trooper and didn’t complain. I think he knew better!

While I was pacing the hallway, we heard a woman in labor. It happened to be the same woman who showed up at the hospital at the same time as I did. I was kind of frustrated that she was in a room in labor while I was being made to walk the halls. At about 11:06 pm, I headed back to the triage area praying that there would be changes to my cervix because I had been in such pain for the last hour. When we got there, the nurse checked me and told me that I was at a 5 and that they were going to get my labor and delivery room ready for me. I asked immediately for an epidural and she told me that when I got to the labor & delivery room they would take my blood, send it down for lab work and when it came back I would be able to get my epidural. Why they would need my blood drawn before I could have an epidural is unknown to me, but that's what they told me. I was in quite a bit of pain and wasn’t sure how long that would take, but I had to accept that as an answer. She finished what she needed to do on the computer and then I walked across the hallway to my L&D suite.

We got into the room around 11:15 or 11:30 pm. By this time, I was in quite a bit of pain and really badly wanted an epidural, but they hadn’t even put my IV in yet. I was crying out in pain as it seemed like the pain needed somewhere to escape to. I felt like such a hypocrite for laughing at the lady Brad and I had heard just an hour or two before crying out in pain. I have never felt pain like that before in my life. It was horrible pain. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be pushing yet, but my uterus just seemed to have a mind of its own and would push anyway. It was weird, because I felt like I could see it pushing and in my brain I was trying so hard to tell myself not to push. At some point, I felt like things had really changed and I shouted out that I thought the baby was right there and I really needed to push. The nurse looked up from her computer station and said, “Okay, let’s check you.” (The whole time I had been in excruciating pain, she had been asking questions like, "Do you have any allergies?" I wasn't answering them, I was making Brad do that part.) Back to the story - She peered over to where I was and looked ‘down there’ and said, “Oh, the head’s right there!” Then she ran out of the room to get the doctor. She came back in and told me I needed to wait to push until the doctor got there. In all seriousness, I looked at her and said, “Why? I don’t need her. You guys can do it. I need to push!” Luckily for the doctor, she was quick in getting there because I really had no intentions of waiting to push.

While bearing down, I wasn’t doing a very good job of concentrating on actually pushing because I wasn’t sure I was allowed to yet. At one point, a nurse got right in my face and told me I was breathing wrong and that I needed to concentrate and push through each contraction for the count of ten. That really helped to ground me and I was glad she did that. As I was trying to push, I yelled out that I couldn’t hold up my own legs and push at the same time and that I needed some help. They hadn't had time to get the stirrups or even drop the bed or anything, so I was trying to hold my legs up and out and trying to push all at once...not easy to do! So, one nurse and Brad grabbed my legs and held them up and to the sides for me while I was able to push. Not five minutes later, my precious baby girl was born. She entered the world at 12:08 am. Yep, just over half an hour after I was put in the labor and delivery suite, my little girl was here. She had no intention of waiting for me to get an epidural. In fact, I didn’t even have time to get a full bag of fluid in me before she came. It was more like ¼ of a bag of saline. It was all so very quick. While it was going on, I thought, this is the worst idea I have ever had! I really wanted an epidural badly, but after she was born I thought, that wasn’t so bad. I could do that again. Not right now, mind you, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, having a baby without an epidural. I am so thankful that she was born quickly and without any complications or problems. She weighs 6 lb. 2 oz. and is 21 inches long. She has lots of light brown/dark blond hair.